I’ve already addressed at length, both here and elsewhere, the idea held in some “direction of history” circles that the Church will inevitably wholly embrace the gender and sexuality positions on the left, with all the up- and down-stream implications of that (in some versions, after so- and so- passes away, after Uchtdorf becomes President, etc.). I don’t mean to keep beating that horse to death, but recent events have triggered a new take on this.

Because of the Church of England’s leftward march on sex and gender issues, the African churches of the Anglican Communion have now officially split with the Church of England; they do not recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as the “first among equals” anymore. I’m not much of an Anglican watcher, but my understanding is that it was a long time in the making. The Communion was already being held together with tape as the largely white, liberal demographic of the Church of England increasingly pressed leftward on social issues to the consternation of its colleagues in the global South. Leaders like Rowan Williams did what they could to keep all sides happy, but the writing was on the wall. (Now, per the game theoretic logic involved in third-party votings in the US, the Church of England can go full-tilt with hot-button sex and gender issues).

In a sense this mirrors a similar hullabaloo on the Catholic side of the aisle. While ostensibly Pope Francis’ letter Fiducia Supplicans was about giving blessings to same-sex individuals, my own personal read of this was that it was a trial balloon more than anything to see how far he could push;* Because they were perceived as being anti-Francis conservative revanchists, the US bishops very carefully and gingerly danced around their concerns with Fiducia Supplicans. Not necessarily attacking it but wanting more clarification.

No such dancing occurred with the African bishops. Without getting into technical theological details, while pro forma professing their allegiance to Rome, they unambiguously and unceremoniously shot the trial balloon down and slammed the door shut on further theological experimentation. The message was sent loud and clear that Rome could only go so far before risking schism with the African Church.

So what are the implications for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Again, I don’t see in the data the idea that even within the relatively white and liberal United States there is a huge groundswell of Gen Zers ready to march on South Temple Street demanding female ordination and same-sex sealings. But putting the US aside, how would this play out in Africa? As I’ve noted before, Africa is the future of the Church. Africa is the future of the world. Africa is the future of everything because they’re the only continent left that is replacing themselves (although we’ll see how long that goes; their birth rates are also plummeting), so the effects of South Temple Street decision making on the African Areas and Stakes are crucial.

Africa is also much more socially conservative, so any global institution that wants to move too far left risks what Canterbury and Rome experienced, a revolt at the only source of demographic growth remaining in the world.

In the Church’s case, I suspect that if we ever did ordain women to the priesthood it would hurt the Church in Africa, but not fatally or even majorly. It would raise some eyebrows, but I might be wrong. While controversial, some African Anglican churches ordained female leaders,** plus Anglicanism is less based on centralized theological decision-making than we are, so I suspect if the President of the Church received a revelation on the matter it would be more digestible than in the Anglican or Catholic context. (For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’ll ever ordain women, but I’m open to the possibility and it wouldn’t be a big deal to me one way or the other, gut-wise I’d put it at maybe an 80/20 chance against before the Second Coming).

Same-sex sealings is another issue. Maybe Africa will eventually move that far left and liberalize on sex and gender issues (of course, if they did go full European/East Coast American then they probably wouldn’t be replacing themselves, that’s sort of the catch-22 here), but given how conservative African countries tend to be on this issue that’s probably quite a bit in the distance if at all (and yes, I know that I’m sweeping together thousands of different ethnicities and communities under the moniker “Africa,” but just because South Africa has gay marriage doesn’t change the basic point here). Matter of fact, the Church’s positioning on this issue could be relatively left-wing in some contexts.

I suspect that the Church officially solemnizing same-sex sealings would be more or less fatal for the Church in Africa, or at least severely attenuate if not reverse its growth. Could the Church pull a Community of Christ, where it recognizes same-sex relationships in some national contexts but leaves it to local leaders in others? (This local decision-making is also the approach taken by several major US denominations). Again, we’re centralized enough I doubt that’s a feasible option given our ecclesial structure. If they can barely maintain a “Global South” exception for sleeveless garments I doubt they would be able to do so on more major gender and sexuality issues (including polygyny, incidentally, another topic for another post).

And of course, this is all orthogonal to the issue of whether the Church should make such moves (bracketing that discussion here), but the recent experiences of the Catholic and Anglican churches suggest that such shifts would not come without consequences in one of the few places it’s growing.

---

*As evidenced by the fact that virtually everybody in Catholicism already agreed that you could give gay individuals blessings, and individual priests like James Martin who ostentatiously violated the guardrails put around it to not make look like it was a same-sex couple blessing were not, to put it gently, exactly persona non grata in the Vatican.

**While some blame the schism on the new Archbishop of Canterbury being female, some think the Communion could have survived had they appointed a more traditionally-minded female Archbishop, and not one who was one of the primary promoters of same-sex blessings.